I have to say i wasn't bothered about the result of this game before the kick off or after the final whistle for that matter, I knew that i was simply going to watch just what the Premier league has become, a have not strolling around against cannon fodder.

I waked to the ground not feeling any sense of anticipation or for that matter with any worries about what the result would be at the end, in truth I felt noting, no excitement, just a sense of resignation about what the Premier League has become, 7 clubs who have a lot more money that the other 13, some of them achieving it under a cloud from owners who it is alleged have put it in using dubious methods that breach Football Fair Play rules and also some who are not exactly ethical.

Now personally I don't really care if some football clubs get richer and but up players for stupid money and play them stupid wages, but every week the time gets nearer when we need to expel these clubs from the Premier League, let them get on with playing in a European Super League whilst the rest of us can get back to a game that has some sort of equality again and where any club in the top two divisions can dream of an FA Cup win and in the top flight , it is not just between 2 clubs every year.

This is not sour grapes for the result on Saturday, I have just grown tired of what the premier League has become, It is not aimed now at the like of me the match going fan, but increasingly aimed at a TV audience, not just in the UK but global, we used to laugh at the Scottish Premier where only two teams have won the League in the last 38 years, but we are not much better now and although some would point to Leicester City, that was 7 years ago now, the Premier League has moved on since then.

I watched the game with little enthusiasm, Saints put up a decent fight first half and should have gone in at the break level, they had put in a shift, but once again we lost a little concentration in the final minutes of a half and like normal up pops up someone for a free header at the far post, mind you it was a fella called Haaland whom I believe has been playing quite well this season, I wouldn't really know, I don't pay much attention to the teams at the top.

The second half started ok, but within 13 minutes we were two nil down, and 23 minutes 3-0 adrift, a few minutes later and there was a little hope when Sekou Mara continued his good run of scoring against Manchester City and scored his first Premier league goal, perhaps giving us some hope for what will be a game that matters next Saturday.

The 4th was inevitable, a penalty that from where i was sat looked a little dodgy, I haven't bothered with watching a replay, so I haven't got a clue whether it was the right decision or not, perhaps someone can enlighten me.

With 10 minutes left I did something I rarely do, I left the game early, not because i was hacked off by Saints performance, I was resigned to the result and manner of it long before kick off, our team battled bravely and made sure that it wasn't a complete rout and that was all I asked before kick off, but because I was sick of what i was watching.

Manchester City's team of prima donna's throwing themselves to the ground and snarling in a linesman's face when he had had the temerity to award a throw in to Saints.

But it was more than that, the Manchester City fans were getting up my nose, once upon a time they were the so called club of the people of Manchester, when you met them at games, they would tell you they would never be like Manchester United, either the club or the fans, that they were for what football was all about, against the commercialism etc and they would rise above all that.

Now here we are in 2023 and they didn't rise above it, they embraced it, there was something that made me feel sick in the stomach, I couldn't quite pinpoint it, but I have now, I could accept when the likes of Liverpool & Manchester United with their Worldwide support embraced the Premier League ethos, although they still had local based fans they had been swarmed by the tourists and overwhelmed I could sympathise with those long term fans who have seen their club taken away from them.

With the London clubs it was slightly different, their fanbase was less centralised and they were more fickle, it was natural that the bulk of their support embraced the big bucks.

But with Manchester City and now Newcastle it is different, it isn't the armchair fans who are embracing their sudden riches, it is the local fans, those same City and Toon Army fans who revelled in their image as the underdogs, of supporting their local club and sneering at the likes of Liverpool & Manchester United as full of tourists and no longer the club of their own hometown.

That is why it rankles, if those two bastions of the supporting your local team etc, then what about the rest of us, if the Middle East Oil Sheiks came calling at St Mary's would I start wearing a tea towel on my head and suddenly take an interest in camel racing or would i be able to just walk away and turn my back on the club that i have followed for over half a century ?

That is the big question that is turning in my head, am I that shallow as the 95% of Newcastle and City fans seemingly are, would I want success at any cost ?

I would hope not, but could any of us truly say they would walk away if suddenly their club had a chance of glory, but at a dubious price.

That is why I walked out early, but it is also why I will be back next week and indeed next season, poor results, relegation won't dampen my support, I have been through all of that over the past 51 years since January 15th 1972 when I first stepped into the Dell, as indeed have the City faithful and Toon Army over the same timescale.

The only thing that may stop me would be us turning into Manchester City or Newcastle, club's of the people who took the 30 pieces of silver !

Photo: Action Images

landsdownsaint added 11:12 - Apr 10 Well said & exactly how I felt but what really annoys me is how our smug elite board have landed us in our current position & it really didn’t have to happen … Nathan jones for the RH , u couldnt make it up , “Woy Done alright I see
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Ifonly added 11:15 - Apr 10 Don't worry Nick. Next year it will all be different in the Championship. Next year we'll be the mega rich club and everyone can hate us. That's what I'm hoping for anyway.
4

felly1 added 11:32 - Apr 10 Although I agree with the sentiment and the way money has altered football, I just dont think this would have been such an issue if we were mid table. I would love you to highlight and comment on our own failings as a team and a club .
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dirk_doone added 11:32 - Apr 10 Chelsea and Liverpool aren't even in the top 7; Brighton and Villa are. It's different every year and it was great when we were doing well from 2012 to 2016. No league is good when you are bottom of it. It will be much more depressing if we are bottom of the Championship next year. As someone who's supported Saints since before our first year in the top fiight, I have always taken pride in the fact that we have been a top tier club for 46 years. It's where a club with a fanbase as big as ours belongs. Pompey fans hate that. They'll be the happiest ones when we are no longer in it. I just hope we win the Championship and come straight back up.

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davidargyll added 11:33 - Apr 10 Absolutely superb game to watch, but unfortunately not from a Saints POV. City were sublime and a real education in how to play the game. I think their performance is best summed up by the words “economy of effort”: ie pass the ball around amongst the back three or four in a very unhurried way, don’t run around when you don’t have to and wait for the breaks, and when they do come, burst forward in numbers. But what we do is hustle and bustle and “put up a decent fight for the first half”. BUT FFS THAT IS NOT AND NEVER HAS BEEN ENOUGH. So when saints did go forward, which they did on at least three times, they had few if anybody running into somewhere the box, and Guess what, we couldn’t score. But, when MC did, on several occasions I counted on at least FIVE in the PA looking for the cross. We don’t, or more likely choose not, to play like that but, as we have been saying for months now, if we don’t try to get somebody, anybody(!) into the box when the cross/pass comes in we will never score. Hence almost the lowest number of GF in the PL. And yet when we let loose Djneppo and Mara, stone me they score! So WTF can’t we have them start? Let’s be honest Selles either: 1. has got no idea how to set up his team to score goals, or 2. he cannot trust the new players who were brought in in January, or 3. his tactics are unworkable, or 4. he cannot get the current squad to put in a shift, or 5. a combination of all four. Whatever RS’s faults, of which naivety and inexperience are amongst them, there is no doubt that Rasmus Ankersen as Director - which is a joke to describe him as that - of Football is the villain of the piece. He’s arrogant and too stupidly bull-headed to realise that his philosophy is ridiculous. He has been almost entirely responsible for all the appointments, sackings and player acquisitions which have got us into the mess we are in. HE IS UTTER SH*TE AND THE SOONER HE GOES THE BETTER FOR ALL OF US. PS. Hands up who thinks we will get another goal this season, let alone another point?! PPS. The reason why we are going down is not because of half a dozen clubs dominating the PL. BUT BECAUSE WE SIMPLY ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO STAY IN IT AND COMPETE WITH THE OTHER 14! OUR DEFENCE IS CR*P AND WE CANNOT SCORE GOALS. DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT QUALIFIES US TO STAY UP?!

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JoeEgg added 11:48 - Apr 10 Well one thing sadly we can all agree on - we now need to be preparing for at least one season in The Championship. Once again when we create chances we simply dont have the players to finish the job. I dont care what Selles thinks - going into a game without a striker is admitting defeat. But maybe he thinks we dont have a player worthy of the label 'striker' anyway! We failed in the summer to replace Danny Ings and we have paid the penalty. The players we spent loads of money on to play as strikers we have apparently rejected and left sitting in the cold. What a crazy crazy policy. Why were these players bought if they weren't considered vital to our fight to stay in the Premiership? Our defenders are young and inexperienced and will continue to concede similar goals while they learn the game and until they are assisted by a few equally talented but more experienced team mates. The brief period under Nathan Jones finished our chances of survival for good, but the damage was done long before that. I agree that the Premier League is no longer what it was- but we could and should have been up there fighting with the Brentfords and Brightons! Colossal mistakes have been made and its too late to save this season. Some of our young players will soon find themselves in the 'want to buy' lists of our more successful money rich Premier League teams. But they could have become legends here at St Marys and we could have had a team to give even the best a run for their money. The players must take their share of the blame - well some of them anyway - but it is the off-field decisions that have destroyed us - the board, the Owners and to a lesser extent the managers, have all contributed to this sad chapter in the history of our great Club.

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schatfield added 11:53 - Apr 10 Good report Nick and agreed
2

FrankSaint added 12:12 - Apr 10 Hear hear, you're spot on about City fans. That's why they are called Citizens. I've got friends from their time in the third division that set up a twinning with Torino fans who live in the shadow of Juventus. And you are spot on to ask what would be a step too far for Saints in terms of ownership. The elite that run football at the highest level are careful most of the time not to go too fast with commercialisation so it's a continuous series of small steps. So, I suspect most fans will just suck it up. It might take a major global event that would end globalisation as we know it, to enforce a change. This has already started with China shutting down on Chinese owners of foreign clubs. In the meantime, who will be allowed by the Premier League to buy Manu?

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SaintPaulVW added 12:19 - Apr 10 Barring a miracle we are going down. Not because of the top 6 money bags clubs but because we can't beat Leeds, WH or a 10 man Wolves etc etc. We can't beat them because of the cumulative drag of poor recruitment, a starvation of funds for several years and now half a season of poor management. Our team set up looks a bit of a mess - we press sporadically, none of the players seem to know where they need to be when we go forward, we mis hit passes constantly. We can't do the basics. As mentioned above we played well for 40 minutes but so what -that isn't enough! I don't think Selles will be in charge next year. I just hope we get someone in who gets the basics right and instills a bit of hunger in the players. I don't recall anyone being fed up with MC their fans and and all they represent when we beat them in the cup

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halftimeorange added 12:20 - Apr 10 The EPL is now equivalent to horses on the flat. All the big races are the province of horses and trainers owned by the massively wealthy, often from oil backgrounds. Nobody wants to see their team humiliated but, all the sides down the bottom have been punished often in front of their own fans this season, something generally unthinkable a decade ago. Our trouble is of our own making as many contributors to this site have pointed out above and over recent months. Bournemouth should survive because they've got a team of fighters who have been up and down and up again. Burnley are going through the same process. Norwich do it repeatedly. It's not necessarily large investment at our level, it's sound investment both on and off the field and this has gone horribly wrong. until we get a focused board, a determined and experienced manager and some driving force on the pitch we will surely drift. We're rather like a Meccano set with too many nuts and not enough bolts.

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FrankSaint added 12:25 - Apr 10 Re our team each of the three parts are poor. Defence, midfield and attack. And they don't fit together. So the whole is less than the sum of the parts. Although I have to say I thought that at least on TV, Bazunu looked good. We don't have a physical hard edge aside from maybe 3 players. We don't have a goal poacher. Our defenders and midfielders can't score from our corners or free kicks. And our goal threat is so poor that in the last part of the match city were camped in the last quarter of the pitch. Last but not least, at any level a football team needs 2 or 3 star players and aside from WPs free kicks and the other WPs dribbling, we have none.

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Kenm added 13:03 - Apr 10 In reply to dirk doone we will soon be playing Pompey !, the present WAY that we are playing and with no regular goal scorer ?, and some of the present team wont play in the Championship will be gone, we WILL STRUGGLE TO COMPETE ?, So playing Pompey in League 1 may be on the CARDS ?
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landsdownsaint added 13:05 - Apr 10 Our players aren’t that bad but Jones & Selles aren’t PL managers & with Rasmus in the mix what chance . We need to sack Selles immediately & get Potter in & let him have free reign
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Ifonly added 13:43 - Apr 10 I see a lot of mentions of Potter. I can't see him agreeing to come and be relegated with us, or wanting to slug it out in the Championship next year. He'd be mad to take us as a career choice. Hopefully he's a bit mad.
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landsdownsaint added 14:25 - Apr 10 They could ask Ralph back for the remaining games , he knows the player he’s been in similar situation & he has a history of getting results when needed , desperate times etc
2

saintmark1976 added 15:21 - Apr 10 Nick, you’ve come out in support of the owners and management on many previous occasions when the majority of us could see where their ridiculous decisions would ultimately take us. Now that our destination for next season appears all but settled you suddenly decide that you don’t like The Premiership any more, rather than admit to your almost blind faith providing you with nothing but the reality of disappointment and ultimate relegation. Personally I quite like the prospect of the Championship where fixtures will not be continuous rearranged to suit TV and we will no longer have to suffer the hideous V A R pantomime nearly every time a goal is scored. Add in the fact that there should be less spotty faced pretend wannabe S A S security personnel at St Mary’s and it’s not all bad. Not forgetting of course that there will also be more games to watch, hopefully without being asked to pay the current stupid amounts of money for a season ticket.

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ItchenNorth added 15:38 - Apr 10 Spon on. The last time we were relegated there was a real fear and uncertainty about what we were going to feel and encounter, as for many of us, it was our first experience of Saints not in the top flight. This time around, I'm looking forward to The Championship, if that's were we end up. It's full of decent clubs, with decent (big) fanbases. No VAR. A league that will feel competitive. The Premier League has become the playground for the mega rich and I hope a European Super League takes the protagonists away soon. Do I want Saints playing in the top domestic league in the country, sure, but in the leagues current state; I'm not fussed. Role on next season. I'll be there whatever league we are in. We'll beat Palace. COYR

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obelisk added 17:23 - Apr 10 Whether or not the EPL is the best in the world as Sky Sports keep telling us (open to debate) or whether the football pyramid is corrupt (obviously it is) I still want to see a decent Saints side throwing their weight around among the big boys. The reason that Saints will not be participating next season is down to incompetent management and a bloated inexperienced squad. It'll be a long haul back up from the Championship - that's if we're lucky. In the meantime enjoy the delights of secret no 9's or goblin midfielders or ghosting defenders or whatever the latest football management consultant gobbledegook is of late. That's what'll send us down without so much as a shout.

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Block8 added 19:56 - Apr 10 It is not the big 6 or 7 in the PL that has us as near as damn relegated, it's the indecision both on and off the pitch. The signings in January were for Jones and Selles prefers to continue to play 4222 a system which we do not really have the players to allow us to succeed. He has no desire to see a 6' 7" striker & us utilising the wingers we have at our disposal to get the ball into him. We are ultra defensive and so rigid in our style that any form of creativeness is stifled. We are not the worst set of players in the PL but we are by far the worst team and as a paying fan it depresses me immensely, I'd much rather we tried to play front foot football, as would many others. On the topic of TV it's rather hypocritical to bemoan Sky/BT et all if you are actually a subscriber and it's the revenue from TV rights that have allowed us to compete at all. On another tact I watched some of the Championship football today and if we play the same style next season as we have this we will still be down there. Lets finish this season take our punishment but have someone in place for pre-season to change our pedestrian style and push us forward literally!

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JimmyMeliaPhD added 02:20 - Apr 11 There's a lot of money in the big sports leagues in the USA, but what they all have in common is that they're competitive every. There is nothing equivalent to the PL stranglehold that Nick is complaining about. The answer for gthe PL, it seems to me, is what all those leagues (american football, baseball, basketball, hockey, 'soccer") in the USA all have--some version of a salary cap. A match-day salary cap, properly administered, would immediately level the playing field significantly in the PL. The big money clubs would still be able toi buy as mmnay overpaid starts at they wanted, but they wouldn't be able to filed the all under a salary cap. Imagine City, still employing all the people they have now, but not being able to play them all on match day.

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Billeewithers added 02:41 - Apr 11 If you have high quality forwards but your coaching style overcomes their talents wherein lies the fault. Clough picked his best players in each position and played accordingly…..some critics say he wasn’t a great coach. The coach is to get the players there on time and pick them up after the game. To start a game without a goal scoring forward is not a winner mentality. With nothing to loose Ted Bates always went for goals…. He could lose but he could also win and sometime win big.

0

YosemiteSaint added 04:58 - Apr 11 This story is confirmed by The Times: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-11957239/Southampton-owner-Dr If true, you know where all the funding we'll generate from player sales this summer will go … .
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SanMarco added 11:33 - Apr 11 Block8 - You actually have to have Sky and BT to watch live top division football, so not sure hypocritical is the right word, although I do see what you mean. I don't like giving money to Sky but even next season it is the only real way to see Saints live if you can't get to the ground. You can bet your house on the fact that when the new 'super league' does eventually happen the media companies will stitch it up so that if we want to watch Saints we will still have to pay for the endless Real Madrid vs Liverpool matches that some/many of us will not be interested in. I agree with everything Nick says but as others have pointed out or hinted at: It is no good only saying this when we are heading down (that is sour grapes), we have to be saying it however we are doing. Would we be saying it if we were 'doing a Brighton' at the moment? I am sick and fed up of elite dominance and corruption (and not just in football) but if you only oppose it during the bad times then it does feel like sour grapes or just a depressive response to our fate. We are not going down because of the sovereign ownership of Abu Dhabi and Saudi however wrong that may be...

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blubberboy added 19:08 - Apr 11 All true: the Premiership is now two leagues in one. But (and I know this isn't the thrust of your article but) the reason we are going down is poor performances against the teams around us. It's no use picking up plucky points against the likes of Chelsea, United and Spurs if we then lose to fellow strugglers such as Leeds, Wolves and Forest. For some unfathomable reason all three managers this season have approached those kind of 'must win' games with what I can only assume is some kind of 'safety first' approach which invariably ends with our being turned over, normally by the odd goal. Witness the continued selection of players like Elyounoussi and Diallo over guys like S Armstrong, Djenepo and Walcott - players who might just make something happen going forward. It's hard to see us picking up another point this season without things changing fast. My biggest concern is that we might struggle in the Championship too. It's a tough league and we'll obviously be losing at least five of our best players this summer. The club needs some kind of rebuild from the ground up, hopefully keeping players like Mara and Edozie who will be more effective at that level, and bringing through some players from the Academy to create what by necessity will be a new-look Saints team. We might need a season or two to consolidate but we WILL be back. What we DO NOT need is another chaotic season of chopping and changing and cash being flung around on an assortment of panic buys. I think for clubs like Saints stability is the key to survival, at least until we get a sheikh of our own.

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RomseySaint72 added 20:18 - Apr 11 Totally agree with Nick probably your best piece this season. Its very reason why I gave up my season ticket when we got promoted back to the Premier League. Also agree with the other Posts its hard enough trying to succeed/stay up in the Premier league at the best of times, but when our own club has pretty much pressed the self destruct button on themselves the outcome was always going to end up with the mess we are in now. Whatever they have tried to achieve with this crazy business model, it needs to be abolished keep it simple 4-4-2 not only on the pitch with experienced leaders mixed with talented youth but also the same approach in the board room 4-4-2 in there as well please with a proper football captain at the helm.

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